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Barclays to axe 3,700 jobs

Barclays intends to cut 3,700 jobs across the group in 2013 as part of a strategic review.

Around 1,800 of the jobs will come from the corporate and investment bank while 1,900 will come from its European retail and business banking arm. Barclays, which currently has around 140,000 employees worldwide, expects the restructuring costs to total £500m.

In a statement released today alongside the bank’s 2012 results, the bank says it wants to focus on investment in the UK, US and Africa while maintaining a presence in Europe and Asia to support its investment banking operation.

Part of the strategic review will be to lower its total cost base by £1.7bn to £16.8bn by 2015.

Group chief executive Anthony Jenkins says: “We have today set out a new course for the future of Barclays. I am extremely proud of the way our 140,000 staff have overcome the difficulties of the last year and shown the resilience necessary to deliver the results we announced this morning.

“It gives me great confidence in our ability to deliver our goal and from today I am determined that no-one should be able to question our intent or our commitment to the path that I have set out.”

The bank saw pre-tax profits plummet to £246m in the year to 31 December, down from £5.8bn over the same period in 2011.

Profits fell due to a number of impairments and charges, including a £4.5bn credit charge in 2012, £1.6bn set aside for PPI redress and £850m for interest rate swap redress. The profit figure was boosted by a £227m gain made by the disposal of Blackrock Inc. In addition, the bank was fined £390m in June by US and UK regulators for its role in Libor-rigging.

The group’s retail banking arm made an adjusted pre-tax profit of £1.4bn, a 4 per cent improvement on 2011’s figure.

Gross mortgage lending increased 5.8 per cent from £17.2bn in 2011 to £18.2bn in 2012. Mortgage redemptions were £11.3bn, up from £10.7bn the year before, resulting in net new mortgage lending of £6.9bn, compared to £6.5bn in 2011.

The average loan-to-value of its mortgage portfolio, including buy-to-let, is around 46 per cent, up from 44 per cent in 2011. New mortgage lending had an average LTV of 56 per cent in 2012, up from 54 per cent in 2011.

Barclays’ investment banking arm experienced a 37.9 per cent increase in pre-tax profits, from £2.9bn in 2011 to £4bn in 2012.

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19th November 20182:58 pm

Comments

There is one comment at the moment, we would love to hear your opinion too.

We all know that Barclays is an unethical organisation, we just do not know to what extent. Stories have come out and are continuing to come out about the depths they have sunk to over the years. There will probably be more stories coming out. The person now in charge was in charge of Barclaycard when it was mis-selling PPI, just the right person to clean up Barclay’s image, along with the failed regulator Sants.

In the meantime they have created a bonus pool which exceeds its profits (I always thought Bonuses were a distribution of profits) and that defies logic. I supposed we should be thankful that their profiterring at the expense of the shareholder has reduced, but it is still profiteering.

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